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| tomman |
Posted on 20-10-27, 01:34 (revision 1)
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Dinosaur
 Post: #802 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 8 days Last view: 1 hour |
Spent some time dealing with the lack of MIDI and subpar music instead of fragging blobs of pixels because while I appreciate QVGA way more than 8K, my ears wouldn't let me rest in peace with that ear-grating OPL emulation experience. tl;dr: Debian sucks, but you can get it to work. Long version: Chocolate Doom is the best pure DOOM experience, since it focuses into emulating the original DOS experience as faithful as possible, bugs and all (the proof is that while most source ports can't play the DOS-era demos, Chocolate can do it). This means no fancy OpenGL renderer, no hi-rez texture packs, no convoluted music replacements, no attempts at all to bring DOOM kicking and screaming into the 21th century (that's what we have Zenimax for!). For music, your only options are: - Nothing at all (for those guys out there that no longer have a soul) - Sucktastic OPL emulation (or if you're lucky, use one of the 3-4 PCI cards with actual OPL silicon inside... if you're willing to jump some security theater hoops because letting usermode directly talk to a soundcard is considered - GUS emulation, which requires using extra WADs, and doesn't work that great anyway - Actual hardware MIDI synthesizers (SoundBlasters are pretty much dead nowadays, but there are USB options if you're lucky) - Software MIDI via Timidity Since I can't shoehorn my AWE32 or Live! into any of my laptops*, it means my only choice is Timidity. Luckily, the Doom/retrogaming community has made a good job collecting usable soundfonts/patches you can load into your synthesizer and enjoy - in fact, the official Chocolate Doom docs give you a good starting point so you can tinker and adjust Timidity to your particular slice of nostalgia. But first, we must understand how Chocolate Doom goes all the way since your .WADs to your speakers/headphones if you choose to pursue the MIDI software path: it uses SDL_mixer, which invokes Timidity, which loads your patches, then it uses those to bring Romero/Prince masterpieces to life. Or so it should do. And here is where Debian comes to shit on your party: it seems their SDL_mixer is linked against Fluidsynth, which ships with some truly AWFUL soundbanks (if you hated OPL emulation, Fluidsynth will really make your ears bleed even more than angry Cacodemons). There seems no way to actually configure Fluidsynth to get it out of the way, or to actually use non-shitty soundfonts (every path seems to be hardcoded?), and there is no obvious way to disable it and let SDL_mixer fallback on Timidity. No matter what configuration file you set on the setup program, Chocolate will not be able to use it since Fluidsynth is not Timidity, and once again, computers are made to rebel on us :/ Let's try something else, then: right at the very end of the Chocolate Doom music README, there is a couple of lines that tells you about a supasekret option you can use to use another command to play MIDIs instead of relying on SDL_mixer - and sure enough, after enforcing the use of Timidity here, things start working as intended... more or less. There is now beautiful MIDI (as long as you've configured your patches properly)... and very annoying gaps where the music should loop! This is NO BUENO, guys and gals of the bBoards! Long short story: turns out Debian's SDL_mixer CAN fallback on Timidity (despite not directly linking to it on the package dependencies!): you have to uninstall ALL Fluidsynth soundfonts (fluidr3mono-gm-soundfont, fluid-soundfont-gm, and timgm6mb-soundfont, which are the 3 hardcoded soundfonts on Debian, it seems). No, you can't leave just one installed - ALL OF THEM have to go! (if it finds even one of those, it will start spamming your terminal with missing file errors and ear rape). If no soundfont exists, Magic™ happens: Fluidsynth will get out of the way and let Timidity take control of the party! It will still ignore your Chocolate Doom timidity.cfg settings, so you should edit /etc/timidity/timidity.cfg to point it to your desired patch set. We're done here, fuck Debian, fuck Fluidsynth, fuck SDL, and while we're at there, fuck the computer industry for killing soundcards too! Too much effort for a game I don't even love, but that's what COVIDiot-induced boredom (and the severe lack of wired broadband access) does to your soul. At least I'm no longer afraid to play Doom in levels other than EASY MODO (though I won't be touching Ultra-Violence or Nightmare anytime soon) Sidenote: Due to the recent change of ownership of Bethesda/Zenimax, Doom now belongs to... Microsoft. WE'RE DOOMED! *OK, thanks to the highly creative Chinese sweatshop engineers which are very clever to craft any kind of illegal adapters (like my $5 SATA-to-eSATA cable that should NOT exist as per the SATA specs), in theory you could plug a Live! into a PCI-to-PCIe x1 adapter card, and plug that into a PCIe x1-to-ExpressCard/mPCIe adapter (yes, they DO exist!), creating something that would rival Sega's Tower of Power in ridiculousness. For the AWE32 the options are tougher: ISA-to-PCI/USB gizmos are known to exist, but unlike PCI converters (which are mostly passive devices, except for bridgechips when applicable), those require actual brains, custom drivers, and are aimed at industrial use cases which mean they're EXPENSIVE AS FUCK, and pretty much useless for any kind of retrogaming. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| funkyass |
Posted on 20-10-27, 03:52
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Post: #175 of 202
Since: 11-01-18 Last post: 672 days Last view: 28 days |
IIRC doesn't bassmidi have OPL synth support? |
| CaptainJistuce |
Posted on 20-10-27, 09:43
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Custom title here
 Post: #945 of 1164 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 75 days Last view: 3 days |
Posted by tomman Sounds like you need FASTDOOM! https://github.com/viti95/FastDoom Optimized for speed on 386 and 486 processors with limited RAM. --- In UTF-16, where available. --- |
| tomman |
Posted on 20-10-27, 14:09
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Dinosaur
Post: #803 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 8 days Last view: 1 hour |
Posted by CaptainJistuce Nice~ Will try that next time I hook up my 386, thanks for the tip. Reminder to myself: make a clean DOS bootdisk for W95. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| kode54 |
Posted on 20-10-29, 04:38 (revision 2)
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 Post: #96 of 105 Since: 11-13-19 Last post: 1473 days Last view: 1473 days |
FYI most Doom ports, I *think* chocolate included, also support General MIDI synthesis using your choice of soundfont too? You just need to read up on configuring it, depending on whether they use TiMiDity++ (kind of eww, but has the advantage of the freepats being freely distributable) or FluidSynth (pick your favorite bank, including heaping donation only commercial banks like Princess Soft)... Or if you're feeling spry, maybe encasing an instance of Sound Canvas VA in a wine process and talking to it via pipes... I've documented how to use their fixed api dll, SCCore.dll, which emulates exactly a single SC 8820 per process it's loaded into, and how to send it commands and pull out samples. No DRM protecting it, either! Also available for macos, same api. The mac version also does dirty tricks to multi instance per host process: rather than load one instance into a tiny host and pipe to/from it, they load multiple instances into the host app's memory and use a shitty naïve walking one byte forward at a time memcmp search to replace the SONAME with a random name and write it to that name in your /tmp folder. Yes, it pollutes with these 47mb turds if the host crashes. E: oops, missed that there was a whole other page to the topic. Yes, FluidSynth is supposed to actually be better than Timidity, except that apps that use it are also supposed to provide at least an option to set the soundfont(s) you want to use with the app. Sucks that debian binaries and repos are lame and hardcode the fricking fluid r3 bank, lol. Of course, it *is* free to redistribute... As for games... I was playing Fall Guys daily, but this game is always grindy and a bit frustrating as you usually get your ass handed to you. We're taking a break from it for a while, though. |
| tomman |
Posted on 20-10-29, 16:03 (revision 1)
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Dinosaur
Post: #805 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 8 days Last view: 1 hour |
Posted by kode54 Here is when Debian maintainers lost their brains and decided to hardcode the Fluidsynth presets: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=715461 Turns out there is a way out of this sabotage: the SDL_SOUNDFONTS variable. Except that To kill Fluidsynth and fall back to Timidity: ...then edit /etc/timidity/timidity.conf and use a dir/source directive to point to your desired patch set (I'm currently using this one, which sounds decent to me). Don't bother using Chocolate's setup program for setting a Timidity CFG - it won't work :/ To use a better soundfont: Suggestions welcome! Anything that sounds as good as my AWE64 (I actually checked - mine is an AWE64, don't know why I always confuse it with an AWE32) would be nice. --- It's that time of the year, the time of the yearly Sonic Hacking Contest! To be fair, this year Contest entries on the Retro category (the only one I actually care - that is, the Gen/MD romhacks) are kinda disappointing to me: most of them focus on character swaps (which are fine, neat technical achievements on its own), instead of the usual WOW! factor from complete layout/art mods from the past. It doesn't help that most ROM hackers lost motivation and/or moved to greener pastures (doing commercial games with original IP, for example), but still, there are a few shining gems. My pick so far is this year version of Pantufa the Cat, if you play it you wouldn't believe this is actually a Sonic engine game! It feels completely different, refreshing, original, something with that WOW! I'm looking for, despite being an eternal work-in-progress with a fat chance in Hell to become a finished product. At least they banned Kaizo hacks from the Contest... but then, we have the Expo for sneaky trolling attempts (Sonic Painful World Spikes Kazio) Oh, don't forget to try this: what would happen if EA published Sonic games? Well, they would have found a way to incorporate a credit card reader into Sega cartridges :P Lovely ads, indeed. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| funkyass |
Posted on 20-10-29, 19:41 (revision 1)
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Post: #176 of 202
Since: 11-01-18 Last post: 672 days Last view: 28 days |
I think you can actually find the soundfont the AWE64 came with out there on the web. but I normally go with unision or the obscenly oversized musyng soundfont |
| kode54 |
Posted on 20-10-30, 01:15
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Post: #98 of 105 Since: 11-13-19 Last post: 1473 days Last view: 1473 days |
I like the Princess Soft Gold bank, and the author has it on his site for download, and the "protection" gating it to only paid up donors is ridiculously simple. It rolls in at about 741MB, but most General MIDI files will use way less of this, and current versions of FluidSynth support dynamically loading only the utilized samples at play time. |
| tomman |
Posted on 20-10-31, 01:20 (revision 3)
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Dinosaur
Post: #807 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 8 days Last view: 1 hour |
This guy has a reasonable setup guide for Chocolate Doom: https://flaterco.com/kb/DOOM/ChocolateDOOM.html In fact, his knowledge base is worth a read, no matter if you are planning to play Doom on either a real DOS/W9x rig (he has endured the pains of PCI audio to find the most suitable setup... and oh boy, I didn't knew that DOS games and PCI audio really don't mix!) or a source port (do you want Doom or something better than Doom?) I ended downloading some of the common Creative/E-mu SB soundfonts (the 2/4/8MB ones used by AWE32/Live!/Audigy, CTxMGM.SF2), plus the original 1MB AWE32/64 ROM soundfont (usually found as 1mgm.sf2). Also, GeneralUser GS (found an old version back from my MIDI playback tinkering days with my Live! cards), a couple Roland-"inspired" soundfonts (SCC-1 and SC-55, which supposedly was the original MIDI gear used by the folks at ID). Fluidsynth works nicely with anything I throw at it. FluidGM is something I'm promptly purging from my systems, it sounds like you're inside a metal garbage can! Don't know how accurate are the Roland ones, but I'm liking the SCC-1 soundfont. The Creative/E-mu 8MB font is also a good pick to my ears. I'm also keeping the EAWPATS/Timidity patches, as they also sound reasonably OK to me. I guess from this point on, it's just matter of testing, and actually playing the damned game. Why in the hell am I dangerously stepping into audiophile territory just for Doom!?!??!? Those cheesy enemy sound effects haven't aged that well: zombies that howl like dogs when they die, or imps that have a pig complex when roaming around... but I'll take those instead of whatever hyper-realistic sounds ship with whatever is the latest gorefest of the week from the AAA FPS leagues :P Almost interesting fact: aside of Solitaire and Minesweeper, my first PC videogame (when I actually got a PC at home, back in 1998) was actually Doom 2, which was setup by the guy that gave me my first computer lessons. Back then I never got past map 2. I was 11 back then, and didn't feared shooters neither despised them. Even today, over 20 years later, I can barely make past map 3 :P But then, I've spent way more time in original Doom than in its sequel. The computer guy also showed me the coolest cheatcode ever (back then): good ole' IDKFA. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| CaptainJistuce |
Posted on 20-10-31, 04:28
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Custom title here
Post: #947 of 1164 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 75 days Last view: 3 days |
Posted by tomman Oooooooooooooooooh yeah. Why in the hell am I dangerously stepping into audiophile territory just for Doom!?!??!? Because it is DOOM! Almost interesting fact: aside of Solitaire and Minesweeper, my first PC videogame (when I actually got a PC at home, back in 1998) was actually Doom 2, which was setup by the guy that gave me my first computer lessons. I don't actually KNOW what my first DOS/Windows game was. We built a 486 back in 1994, I think(the Pentium Math Bug was all over the news). It was probably a shareware demo off a "billion games on a CD" disk. ... I remember thinking Doom(shareware) was "cheating" by shooting me in the back, it "wasn't fair" that I could be attacked from places outside my view, and scrolling shooters were inherently better because you could "see everything". (Contra Dude was WAY more badass than Doom Guy.) --- In UTF-16, where available. --- |
| creaothceann |
Posted on 20-10-31, 21:02
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 Post: #303 of 456 Since: 10-29-18 Last post: 56 days Last view: 15 hours |
My first PC game was Day of the Tentacle, a full version included on a magazine CD. I even got that before I actually had a PC to play it on, I was just buying these magazines and drooled over the graphics when I only had a GB and Atari 7800/2600. My current setup: Super Famicom ("2/1/3" SNS-CPU-1CHIP-02) → SCART → OSSC → StarTech USB3HDCAP → AmaRecTV 3.10 |
| funkyass |
Posted on 20-10-31, 21:47
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Post: #177 of 202
Since: 11-01-18 Last post: 672 days Last view: 28 days |
my first game was simcity |
| Kawaoneechan |
Posted on 20-10-31, 23:11
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The Snarkmeister
 Post: #523 of 599 Since: 10-29-18 Last post: 208 days Last view: 1 hour |
I... I don't remember. |
| tomman |
Posted on 20-11-01, 15:13
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Dinosaur
Post: #809 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 8 days Last view: 1 hour |
First videogame ever: Super Mario Bros. (from the SMB/Duck Hunt 2-in-1 pack-in), on a legit front-loader NES - my only cousin back then got one as his Xmas present back in 1992 or so, and we spent those days watching Mario fall into bottomless pits. I would meet fate with the Sega Genesis one or two years later... First PC videogame: Win95 Solitaire, on my uncle's Pentium box sometime around 1997 (I still have most of the parts of that PC, although the PCChips mobo is now busted, and the 2GB Seagate HDD suddenly died this year), then Minesweeper, then Pinball, then some random simple games from whatever shovelware CD-ROM his computer guy had installed into it. First legit PC videogame: Doom 2, circa August 1998, on my shiny new Pentium something (can't even remember if it was vanilla or MMX) box, running a leaked pre-release Win98 beta (the fancy new HTML Help files were still in English!). I had limited PC gaming exposure between 1998 and 2001, between that shiny new Pentium box being a victim of our shitty electricity service (both the original 4GB Samsung HDD and half of the 16MB RAM died shortly after purchase!), and a severe lack of access to software (no Internet, shareware magazine CD-ROMs were uncommon and somewhat expensive) and computer skills (I initially thought "PowerPoint" was a fancy name to something related to electric stuff, not a program I would despise a decade later, so I was afraid to just "click and run"). My initial days of doomed dooms of doomy Doom were very short-lived. I used my computer (when it actually worked and could get booted!) mostly for Word and my initial experiments with software development instead :) First emulator/ROM: Sonic 1 on Gens, ~August 2001 or so, shortly after I got hooked to The Wired™. "Wait, what you do mean that there were other Sonic games for the Genesis!?!?!? WTF, Nintendo had a "Super" Nintendo too?!" First Linux game: GNOME 1's Samegame? From a SuSE 6.3 free magazine CD-ROM sometime around 2002. First Steam purchase: Waveform (October 2012, IIRC), and only because I needed a game that wasn't from Valve for testing the Linux version. (My first three Steam games were gifts from a friend: both Portals and Taxman's Sonic CD) Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| wertigon |
Posted on 20-11-01, 16:44
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Post: #151 of 205
Since: 11-24-18 Last post: 168 days Last view: 4 days |
First videogame ever: A Pacman clone c:a 1986 or so, on an old Gen II (era before NES) Phillips console my parents owned. First PC (as in Personal Computer) game ever: An old black and white original Macintosh game where you ran around in a castle. Dark Castle perhaps? First NES game: Duck Hunt. Played it while my family was visiting some relatives, and for some strange reason we had an NES a couple of months later. First legit PC (as in Windows) game: Warcraft II, played it on my friends computer and was one of the biggest reasons my dad got a computer the year after. Hey, I'm sensing a pattern! First emulator/rom: Either ZSNES or NESticle, c:a 1997 or 1998 I think. I still remember those howling wind noises from Chrono Trigger and FFVI... First Linux Game: Some text only game. I don't remember if it was nethack or bsd-tetris. |
| CaptainJistuce |
Posted on 20-11-01, 20:56
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Custom title here
Post: #948 of 1164 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 75 days Last view: 3 days |
First videogame: unknowable. One of my earliest memories is riding home in the back seat of the car next to a brand-new Vectrex(doubtless bought on clearance), and the 99/4a is older than that. Also, arcade machines in the grocery store, pizza place, and Sears(Sears had a mini-arcade with a Space Invaders pinball, and I don't know why I remember that pinball so vividly). My first console game is... PROBABLY Minestorm on the Vectrex. Relatives had Ataris(one had a 5200, which is now mine decades later), but I was probably too young to be trusted with them. I have known video games longer than I have known me. That's... something. --- In UTF-16, where available. --- |
| creaothceann |
Posted on 20-11-02, 23:36 (revision 1)
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Post: #304 of 456 Since: 10-29-18 Last post: 56 days Last view: 15 hours |
114 hours into Horizon: Zero Dawn. I did every side mission I could find before doing the main story, without the weapons tutorials (I should do them for the XP...) but including the Frozen Wilds add-on (was hard at first, a bit like this...) up until right before going up Thunder Drum. I then stopped there and continued the main story where you climb down the palace balcony in Sunfall and enter the ancient facility. Then learned about the history of the world there and at GAIA Prime. As a result I'm level 57 while the next main story quest is rated for level 34. But I think I'll complete Frozen Wilds first since apparently the main story ending prevents playing further. My current setup: Super Famicom ("2/1/3" SNS-CPU-1CHIP-02) → SCART → OSSC → StarTech USB3HDCAP → AmaRecTV 3.10 |
| Nicholas Steel |
Posted on 20-11-04, 15:45
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Post: #376 of 426
Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 511 days Last view: 26 days |
Posted by creaothceann The game will warn you once you reach that point (in case you're just going off of what other people say). AMD Ryzen 3700X | MSI Gamer Geforce 1070Ti 8GB | 16GB 3600MHz DDR4 RAM | ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero (WiFi) Motherboard | Windows 10 x64 |
| CaptainJistuce |
Posted on 20-12-14, 09:40
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Custom title here
Post: #961 of 1164 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 75 days Last view: 3 days |
I've been playing Cosmo Police Galivan, the Nintendo version. I'm actually having a lot of fun with this one, and it seems a shame to let it just languish in obscurity, so here we are. First things first: Nichibutsu apparently made two different games of the same title, and the Nintendo game is very different from the arcade game(there's several home computer ports, all based on the arcade). The Galivan I'M playing is an exploratory platformer, compartmentalized into sections, like Iji. Each section is a distinct "level" to explore and scrape out the secrets within. Once you defeat the boss and leave the level there's no going back. ... I'm not sure if this means the game can be rendered unbeatable by skipping a necessary pickup. That would take some experimentation on my part that I am not sure I care to embark upon. I know the first stage you need two of three pickups to reach the boss and the third is required to harm him, but I don't know if that holds true on other stages. The game came out in June 1988, placing it the same month as the fairly influential Blaster Master/MetaFight(actually about a week before MetaFight, if the release dates I'm seeing are accurate), and it seems like the folks at Nichibutsu had some similar ideas in regards to more detailed backgrounds and powerup-gating(though their spritework is not as good as Sunsoft's pixelmancy). But Nichibutsu also put some light RPG elements into their game: collecting experience points by killing monsters will raise Galivan's level, which increases his maximum hit points and "cosmo power"(written CP, pronounced MP), and his swords can be made more powerful by killing monsters with them. Special weapons are fixed in power and cost CP to use, but are also ranged. ... There's actually a third consumable point the game tracks in your status bar next to HP and CP. It is labelled GP, I've got no idea what it is supposed to stand for, but it is the coolest points. If you collect the eight P item drops it takes to fill the GP meter, Galivan will strike a pose, a little explosion animation will play atop his sprite, and he will morphin' time into his Cosmo Police standard issue armored suit. While armored, all damage is halved, and each hit will reduce the GP gauge by one. When it falls to zero, Galivan's transformation will end and he will return to being a dude in combat fatigues instead of a power-armored defender of justice. There is one major control quirk, in that peak jump height can only be attained with a running start. It is kinda weird, and it throws me off pretty regularly. Other than that, the controls seem to just do what you want them to. Quite surprisingly, the game has not just a battery-backed save, but an AUTOMATIC battery-backed save. Craziness, I tell ya. The plot, such as it is(filtered through the english translation patch I am playing, and the readme confesses they had to remove about half the text for space reasons), is pretty straightforward. It is Cosmo Year 2010(whatever that means, but probably "present day AD" if I had to guess). You are a the titular Galivan, a member of the Cosmo Police, a peacekeeping agency who have apparently just had their shit WRECKED by the evil crime syndicate Mado. The Mado have seized "control of the universe" as well as several other Cosmo Police officers and a bunch of cool space law enforcement tools like high-jump boots and laser swords and hyper rays. Basically, they've done a lot of seizing in a very short period of time, and they seem to have pissed off the wrong people while doing so. As the last active member of the Cosmo Police, you have hopped in your ship and booked it for the enemy planet Badurr so you can invade the Mado's dimension, wreck THEIR shit, free your coworkers, retrieve your stuff, kill the Mado's boss Madius, and restore peace to the universe. You know, just another day on the job. (This story, it must be noted, is completely unrelated to the early-80s japanese TV show Space Sheriff Gavan. Any resemblance to any other interstellar force of power-armor-clad, lightsaber-wielding law officers battling extradimensional crime syndicates is purely coincidental.) --- In UTF-16, where available. --- |
| Nicholas Steel |
Posted on 20-12-18, 03:29 (revision 2)
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Post: #380 of 426
Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 511 days Last view: 26 days |
https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/17/22188013/cyberpunk-2077-ps4-refunds-playstation-store CDProjektRed is not having a fun time. The game was removed from the Playstation Store and refunds are being offered. AMD Ryzen 3700X | MSI Gamer Geforce 1070Ti 8GB | 16GB 3600MHz DDR4 RAM | ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero (WiFi) Motherboard | Windows 10 x64 |
